Eradicating extreme poverty in Northern Nigeria

Nigeria is said to be the poverty headquarters of Africa. It is also reported that over 90.8 million Nigerians are living below poverty line. In another shocking report, every Nigerian becomes destitute or poor each passing minute. With these glaring and convincing reports, we need to worry about the high rate of poverty in the country. Poverty is a state of lack, hopelessness and pauperization. The population of Nigeria has hit more than 200 million with two-third living in abject poverty. No wonder, the youths,  who constituted over 60 per cent of the population, have remained idle and sources of security threat.

Successive and present administrations have come up with various policies to eliminate extreme poverty in the country. Unfortunately, however, nothing much has been achieved. Instead the poverty rate is rising exponentially. Poverty increased and deepen in 1970s in Nigeria as a result of oil price boom that pushed Nigeria as the Africa`s wealthiest country. As the elite grew richer and got more economic space and relevance in the petroleum industry, successive military and civilian government neglected agriculture. This discovery made Nigerian leaders too lazy to think outside the box and of course we are still suffering from this mentality.

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Over a decade, Nigeria is continuously facing insecurity issues such as insurgencies, kidnapings, cattle rustlering, and arm banditry,  especially in the northern region of the country with northern Nigeria as the main victim of poverty, because studies have shown that most of the people that are wallowing in abject poverty come from the North.  This is as a result of poor or unpatriotic leadership, individualistic behaviour of our elite and to make it worse, how we always religionise the failure to develop the region.

Majority of religious leaders are not helping matters, they often tell the people that poverty, hunger, poor governance, diseases, lack of education and infrastructure are divine or due to our sins. Perfect example is the recent outbreak of cholera in Zamfara State, instead of the governor to find out the causes of the outbreak and provide proactive measures he ended up telling the world that the disaster was as a result of the sins committed by the people of the state.

How can we develop with this kind leaders that lack focus and vision? There is the need to address extreme poverty for the region to remain in peace. And truly, the quickest measure that will curb the unemployment and reduce poverty is investing in agriculture. The region has over 70 per cent fertile but uncultivated land; public private partnership in agriculture will help to produce million jobs.

The government’s previous social investment programmes and the current one, such as the conditional cash transfer programme, where the poorest segment of the society are given five thousand naira monthly, have been dismissed as half measures that will not solve the problem.

One of the best ways to tackle extreme poverty is advancing inclusive growth, leading more sustainable poverty reduction, self-employment through entrepreneurship is critical for inclusive growth and reducing poverty and also, digital transformation is a powerful driver of inclusive growth. Regular checking of population growth in line with economic and social development programmes and policies will enormously address the problem in the region.

Idris Mohammed,

Abuja